Carpet shampooing is a way to thoroughly clean your carpet. The shampoo is applied to the carpet with hot water, brushes agitate the shampoo and work it down into the carpet fibers, the dirty solution is then vacuumed up leaving the carpet clean. Whether owning one makes economic sense depends upon your situation. All carpets should be cleaned once a year to remove all built up dirt and oils - your regular vacuum can only do so much. By shampooing the carpet annually the life of the carpet will be extended and indeed many manufacturers now make such cleaning part of their warranty conditions.

Home Carpet Shampooers are very similar to carpet cleaners and have a lot of the same issues, namely lack of power to fully extract the water. Commercial carpet shampooers especially truck mount carpet cleaning machines are generator driven and have power to extract most of the dirty solution from the carpet, leaving it drier than most household units can. Carpet shampooers differ from carpet cleaners in that the carpet is actually shampooed and the machine has brushes to turn in the shampoo to allow it to penetrate deep into the fibers. There are many big brand names for carpet shampooers such as Bissell, Hoover and Carpet Devil. The machines that have the ability to heat the water will provide a better finish than those that do not have that facility.

If you need all your carpets cleaned annually I would suggest that getting the professionals in to do the job would save you time and money. But if you need to clean your carpet more frequently due to allergies or your pets or children, then I would say having a home carpet shampooer on hand could be a life saver. We all know that with children and pets accidents happen, and it's great to get that mess sorted out as soon as possible. Being able to quickly, easily and conveniently clean a room or a small area of carpet can be very useful.If you have rugs then these units can also be used as rug steam cleaners, and they can do good job. Portable carpet shampooers are readily available in the stores and on-line, starting a low prices of around $50.